22Oct 00

sigh a skeleton of my own, i suppose (though maybe old r.e.m. would be more appropriate to the way tom used the term). or a ghost from my abject adolescence. or something. all i know is i heard it on the radio after not having heard in maybe a couple of years and swooned as helplessly as ever and if i’m going to stick up for boston and the pumpkins i might as well lay it all out.

this isn’t her best song, mind you. if i was to try to pick what is, i’d reveal my knowledge of under the pink more than you’d like. and i’m aware of the kate bush-imitation critique but that doesn’t mean i’ve put on the dreaming anytime recently. and nostalgia might provide an excuse for the weak but there must be a reason i got nostalgic in the first place right so

it’s not the lyrics. not in any semantic way, at least, and it never was. “delivery” would be much nearer the mark. kate bush’s voice is ‘stronger,’ conventionally at least, but i don’t plan to start listening to opera any time soon. the cracks and whispers and near-misses express in themselves, even if fragility is all they express. the ornaments on “chains” make the song — maybe because they’re somehow reminiscent of indian classical vocal ornaments (which my mom hears in morrissey’s melismas too –may well be something there) or maybe because they make sonic the search of some sort that the lyrics seem to be about from what i heard.

and make alluring as well — amos is after all a consummate miserabilist.

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